One feature in their history deserves especial mention. In 1578, when the ill-fated expedition of Sebastian of Portugal took place, large numbers of Portuguese nobles and gentlemen were made prisoners, and sold as slaves in the market-places of the chief towns of Morocco. Many of these were bought by Portuguese Jews, who must have been sorely tempted to requite the injuries themselves and their fathers had received on these captives, who were wholly at their mercy. But they took a nobler revenge. They not only exacted no ransom of them, but allowed them to return to their homes, requiring of them no other condition than that of passing their word of honour that they would, on arriving in Portugal, remit to their former masters the sums that had been paid for their redemption from slavery. History has recorded few nobler actions. FOOTNOTES: [177] _Some Observations of a London Merchant about the Bill for the Naturalization of the Jews_, A.D. 1753. The writer had probably conversed with persons who remembered the state of things in England before the readmission of the Jews. As regards the assertion of the Spanish historian, therefore, there is very reasonable likelihood of the Jews having been allowed to live without molestation in England during the reigns of the Tudors. Indeed, as Disraeli has remarked, if there had been no Jews in England, Sir E. Coke would hardly have insisted so forcibly on their not being admissible as witnesses. But the statement respecting the building and public use of synagogues must be taken with reservation. The expulsion from Spain occurred a little before the close of the fifteenth century. Scarcely more than fifty years afterwards we find Cromwell’s divines declaring that ‘for the Jews to have synagogues, or any public meetings for worship, was not only evil, but scandalous to Christian churches.’ Surely they could not have said this, if synagogues had so recently existed in London, and worship been celebrated in them! [178] This king seems to have had a dislike to excessive homage, which was a rare feature in an Eastern prince. It is recorded of him that on one occasion, after one of his great victories, his soldiers saluted him with Oriental adulation, some declaring him to be a prophet, others an angel, and others God Himself. Finding that he could not dissuade them from their impiety, he ordered a deep pit to be dug, and then, throwing one of his shoes into it, gave out that the man who honoured him most was to fetch it out. Numbers instantly threw themselves into the pit. He then gave orders to have the earth thrown back again, burying the whole of his worshippers alive! Doubtless none ever offered him adoration again.